


Not Your Kind of People

by waketosleep



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Boundaries, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Time, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relationship Negotiation, Sexual Experimentation, hair fixation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-16 22:37:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11262441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: Inej knows that eventually, she and Kaz will figure out how to be intimate without someone having a panic attack. She knows this because she also knows that Kaz is constitutionally incapable of backing down from a challenge.(Linked and semi-sequential porny one-shots)





	1. We Make a Pair of Parentheses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue/gifts).



> Scenes from the nascent shared sex life of Inej and Kaz, since it was tragically never depicted in the books.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You don't want to be there alone." He paused. "Have you never spent a night all by yourself, in any of the places you've lived?"
> 
> No, there had always been other people around. In the wagon with her parents, at the Slat, on her ship, even when she'd been at the Menagerie. "Have _you_ , Kaz?" Inej was pretty sure she knew the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bed-sharing fluff.

He hardly ever came to meet her at the docks when she came home. Sometimes Rotty or Anika would be there waiting for her, sitting on a crate or stubbing out a cigarette when she disembarked; their presence was a subtle hint that some news awaited her at the Slat, so Inej would go directly there from the ship and her first view of Ketterdam would be the rooftops and alleyways of the Barrel, repolluting her lungs with coal smoke and reorienting herself to the forest of spires and chimneys. Anika would use the trip to update her on the current state of affairs, helping Inej stay on top of the shifting map of gang alliances and the comings and goings of people of interest. Rotty preferred to regale her with half-true stories about the Dregs' latest fights, swindles, conquests and failures until she nearly toppled off a roof laughing. They would leave her at the door to Kaz's office (which didn't feel right being on the first floor, however glad she was that he was using the stairs less often). Inej would pause at the door for a moment, listening for some hint that he was in there before letting herself in.

Sometimes Kaz was there and she felt his gaze tracking her as she drifted inside, shutting the door behind her and sitting in one of the hard chairs in front of his desk (or perching on the edge of it, or slipping around to his side to read all his papers over his shoulder). Sometimes he was out, and Inej sat in his chair to wait for him. There was often a note waiting for her, quick-scrawled keywords to say when he'd be back or a short missive about some lead he'd discovered for her on a target.

Sometimes there was just a little bundle of wild geraniums lying on the blotter as though he'd forgotten them there. Inej would hold them up to admire the colour in the sunlight, trace a finger lightly along the soft edges of the petals, break a stem to enjoy that sharp, indescribable green smell on her fingers after weeks of nothing but sea air, tuck the flowers in among her hair. It was typical Kaz hypocrisy to tease her about sentimentality and then remember the one time she'd told him about her mother's favourite flower. It was almost bizarre that the same man who usually gave gifts of finely-crafted weapons had the capacity to go out and buy her a posy of flowers. She felt warm inside when she sat in his high-backed chair, stroking a light finger over geranium blossoms and thinking about her mother. She was beginning to associate them with Kaz, too. He was probably doing that on purpose. 

She could count on one hand the number of times she'd spotted Kaz himself loitering around Berth 22 when they came into port. Not that she ever looked for him--she had work to do--but after his first appearance it became a game among the crew to climb the rigging when Ketterdam appeared on the horizon, pointing spyglasses at the harbour. Anyone who saw Kaz kicked up a ruckus of hooting and whistling (and when those eventually lost their power, lewd comments) to try and make Inej blush. The part of the game that amused Inej was that they would all suddenly clam up when the Wraith got close enough to shore for Kaz to hear them. She thanked all the Saints that he never showed up at the docks with flowers.

Most of the time, though, when Inej returned to Ketterdam it was Jesper who met her ship. Generally, he couldn't even be bothered to wait until she disembarked and would just march up the gangplank like he owned the boat. At least, once he'd hugged the breath out of her, he always helped the crew with their last duties before they went for shore leave. And then grabbed her bag out of her cabin before she could stop him, as if she couldn't carry her own things to Geldstraat. It wasn't like she had much to lug around; she still had her own room in Wylan's house where she'd left some things--clothes, climbing gear, hairpins, a spare whetstone. Mostly because Wylan had insisted. He'd told her, quite seriously and forcefully, that his home was hers. Multiple times. Inej was willing to concede that there were more than enough bedrooms in the place for the three people who actually lived there, so maybe Wylan's generosity wasn't costing him much.

When Inej went home with Jesper directly from the docks, she would put off her visit to the Slat until the next day. Once in a while, this strategy succeeded in luring Kaz out of the Barrel on that first evening, so that Wylan could triumphantly ply him with food and drink until he felt sociable. Sociable for Kaz, anyway.

She didn't notice that it was a routine until they broke it. She couldn't name the feeling she had the day they came home to Ketterdam to find nobody waiting to meet her. Disappointment? Loss? She remembered belatedly that Jesper was out of town; on her last stop in Os Kervo she'd received a note from him saying that he, Wylan and Wylan's mother were going to visit Novyi Zem for a while. Inej went to find the note in her cabin and check the dates; Jesper didn't expect to be back in Kerch for another four days. The house, she realized abruptly, would be empty.

Inej made a face at the note and threw it back in the general direction of her desk, where it drifted gently down to settle on a stack of old manifests. She decided to go to the Slat.

Kaz looked up from his desk and blinked at her when she let herself into his office. "I thought you just got into port today?"

"Nice to see you too," said Inej tartly.

He didn't even have the decency to flinch. "I expected you to show up here tomorrow. You know I'm always pleased to see you."

Her cheeks heated. "Jesper and Wylan are in Novyi Zem."

Kaz watched her expectantly for a moment, but whatever he wanted to hear wasn't coming, so finally he said, "And...?"

"...And they're not at home in Ketterdam?" Inej said blankly. "So the house is empty."

Kaz frowned at her. "Don't you have a key to that house?"

It had come with one of the lectures about keeping her bedroom there, yes. 

"As I understand the practice," he went on, "having a key to a house means you're entitled to come and go from there as you please without much risk of anyone calling the stadwatch."

Inej huffed. "That's not the point. It's just a very large house to have one person rattling around in it. The servants don't even live there. And they're probably not expecting me to suddenly appear."

Kaz cocked his head and _studied_ her. Then he put down his pen and leaned back in his desk chair. "You don't want to be there alone." He paused. "Have you never spent a night all by yourself, in any of the places you've lived?"

No, there had always been other people around. In the wagon with her parents, at the Slat, on her ship, even when she'd been at the Menagerie. "Have _you_ , Kaz?" Inej was pretty sure she knew the answer.

"Fair enough," said Kaz. "Just stay at the Slat."

"Where? In the rafters? I don't have a room here anymore, Kaz."

"You can stay in mine," he said with studied nonchalance.

She was sure she'd misheard him. "Are you telling me I should sleep in your bed? You, Kaz Brekker. Your bed."

He scratched a hand through his hair and frowned at her. "I don't know where else in my room you'd sleep. I can't say I recommend the floor."

Inej crossed her arms. "And in this scenario, where are _you_ going to be sleeping?" 

He looked away. "Well, it's not a big deal. I have a lot of paperwork...." he trailed off.

Kaz planned to give Inej the use of his bed and sacrifice his own sleep. This was one of the rare instances when she missed his pre-Ice Court tendency to be a completely selfish bastard. Kaz made a truly obnoxious martyr. "No," she said.

He blinked. "Pardon?"

"No, that doesn't work for me. It's your bed, Kaz. I'm not kicking you out of it."

"There really isn't another option unless we sha--" He shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked.

She marked his tense posture; both (gloved) hands were gripping the edge of the desk, fingers splayed and pressing hard into the wood. He was curled into himself a little, staring into the middle distance and looking like all of his muscles had spontaneously frozen just as he was about to push his chair back. Inej felt kind, patient ruthlessness settle over her like a cloak.

"You had to fight for that private space," she said quietly. "It's yours and should be protected. So there are only two options I will accept: we can share your bed or I can go back to Wylan's house."

He took a very deep breath and spoke to his desk blotter. "We just established that you don't want to go stay there alone. And the more I think about it, the less I like it for security reasons. Better the place stay empty than you be there alone with no backup."

It wasn't like she was a deep sleeper. She was about to press that point when he levered himself out of the chair. He braced one hand on the desk as he walked around it to stand in front of her. Inej looked up at him. He was near enough that she could see his dark eyelashes fanning out under his brows and the texture of the scar under his chin. She could feel the stirrings of air when he exhaled and was intensely aware of every scant inch of space that still separated their bodies. Kaz was standing with his spine arrow-straight, the fingers of one hand still pressing into the desk like a touchstone while his other hand hung down at his side. Deliberately maintaining his distance while hovering close enough to touch. She could tip forward and press her forehead to his chest. She tried to believe he'd welcome that contact and couldn't. Her heart was pounding. This happened every time he got so close; all the air would seem to leave the room at once and Inej would feel dizzy with apprehension. Anticipation. Saints, lying beside him on a bed like this would kill her. She was ready to cut and run.

"'I will have you without armour, or not at all'. I can't say you didn't warn me," he said in a rougher voice than usual, and every word brought a warm puff of air to her forehead. She squeezed her eyes shut; having that ultimatum thrown back at her cut deeply. Her cheeks went even hotter from the shame.

"Kaz, when I said that to you, I was--"

"--Telling the truth," he said quietly. She peered up at him but could read nothing from his expression. "You and I are built on honesty, not kindness or comfort."

Inej jolted. "You lie to me all the time!"

"I do not!" he shot back, and then his face split into a grin that deserved a slap just on principle. "I withhold. I prevaricate. I fail to correct assumptions. Those are different."

She bit down on the inside of her lip to keep from smiling, because he didn't need the encouragement. "In your twisted brain, I'm sure they are. But what I said was needlessly cruel. And unfair. I know perfectly well what it's like to have ghosts. They don't just go away because you wish they would."

"No," said Kaz, "that would be far too simple and carry a high risk of happiness. But you deserve for me to make the effort." He reached out and cupped his gloved hand around her elbow. All her nerves sang as his thumb caressed her arm through her sleeve, up, down, and she breathed in deeply when he dragged his hand lightly up her arm to rest on her shoulder. As long as he was protected by a double-barrier of clothing, Kaz was becoming bolder with this type of light, controlled contact, touching just to touch. Inej darted a quick glance at the hand he still had braced on the desk and saw he was leaning harder on it, fingers gripping the surface like it was a lifeline. She looked deliberately away, allowing him the fiction that he was handling this calmly, and focused on his face. Had he leaned in a little closer to her? Was he looking at her or through her, like he did when he was lost in his own head? The corner of his mouth ticked upward; at her, then. She let an answering smile spread across her own face and rolled her neck a little with pleasure when his fingers pressed into the back of her shoulder, gently massaging the muscle.

The other hand left the desk to cradle her other shoulder and he closed the distance still between them, far enough to not-quite press his lips to the peak of her hairline. Inej pressed her hands to her thighs to keep them from sliding up under the back of his waistcoat.

"I'll tell you right now that I sleep in my clothes," he said into her hair. "So don't take it personally. It's dead men who have to look for their trousers when they get woken in the middle of the night."

She froze at the implication. Damn him, he'd managed to surprise her yet again. She'd been preparing for an extended argument about going back ho--back to Wylan's. But maybe she should have expected this; she'd practically dared him, after all. Kaz Brekker was not built to back down from a challenge.

"That--" She cleared her throat and tried again, and her voice sounded more normal this time. "That's reasonable. You do take your coat and boots off though, right?"

He huffed a little laugh that tickled her scalp and then stepped away, letting his hands drop back to his sides. Her shoulders felt cold. He was already back behind the desk, picking up his coat and cane. "I'm famished," he said. "Waffles for dinner? Since you've been stuck eating nothing but Ravkan food for weeks?" He plucked his hat off its hook and dropped it onto his head.

"I grew up eating Ravkan food!"

"You're breaking my heart. Fine, a double order of waffles for you." Kaz glided up next to her and offered his arm and a grin as toothy as a shark's. "You're buying."

"If I had any sense, I'd leave you," she said after a moment of glaring didn't diminish his smile.

"Best bit of luck I've had that you don't," he said as she looped her arm through his.

***

His leg seemed to be about as good as it ever got, so Inej led the way back to the Slat via the rooftops. Climbing helped to settle a belly full of waffles and fried potatoes. To his credit, Kaz kept up well. In fact, maybe she'd gone too easy on the pace, because he still had the breath for sass by the time they were within a block of home.

"Where did you manage to put that much food?" he asked, using his cane as a counterbalance as they walked along the ridge of a roof. "Did you stash waffles in your pockets?"

"I eat like a bird," she said.

"So, your body weight in worms, bugs and stale breadcrumbs daily?"

Rather than dignify that with an answer, she did a controlled slide down the slope of the roof, gliding on the lead shingles, and used her momentum to launch her body through the air to the flat top of the next building. It did feel a bit like flying, that suspended moment in the air before gravity reasserted itself. She rolled to her feet on the black tarred surface and stared back across the gap at him.

Kaz was still balanced on the ridge where she'd left him. He looked pointedly down at the steep pitch of the roof, then at his cane, then across the gap at her.

"Hollow bones!" she called back helpfully.

She couldn't hear it, but it looked like he was laughing. He shook his head and then made his own descent, cane held aloft; his technique lacked somewhat in grace but he managed not to fall three stories to the ground and in fact, tucked into a very neat roll on his landing before popping to his feet like a man with two good legs. Inej supposed not needing to call him a medik was the important thing.

"Your point is made," he said, brushing bits of gravel off of his coat.

"I don't know why you're complaining," she said. "See if I buy you dinner again, Brekker."

He gave her a look so searing she was certain that if they'd been two normal people, he'd have kissed the life out of her just then. Instead, he smirked and snatched up his cane, and she found the generosity of spirit to shinny down a drainpipe and walk the last stretch back to the Slat on the ground.

They went quiet as they creaked up the stairs of the Slat and by the time they reached the third floor landing, Inej was fighting the impulse to slide back down the banister. Kaz made an admirable attempt at normalcy when they reached his rooms. "Shut the door," he said over his shoulder as he walked into the dark office ahead of her. It was completely unnecessary, given why they were coming in here, but it was what he'd always said, and she felt a little more sure of herself as she pushed the door shut and heard the latch click.

The desk was still sitting in his former office but was clean of paperwork, which had all moved downstairs. The space seemed to have been given over to storage; she saw a box with decks of cards in it, the corners cut off, and a Makker's Wheel was propped against the far wall, a sheet falling off of it. Inej's feet drifted to the bedroom doorway without much awareness on her part, but she stopped at the threshold. She'd been in here before--Kaz used to command her to retrieve things he'd stashed under the bed or in the trunk on a regular basis--but when she came up here as a guest, she stayed in the office.

The moon was full and the light came in the window, which he kept more-or-less clean enough to see through, so Kaz hadn't bothered to light the lantern. The bedroom was all stark white light and black shadows. Kaz cast the longest shadow, standing in front of the window as he shucked off his coat and hung it on its hook. His vest and tie followed, leaving him in his shirtsleeves. The moonlight made him look like a chiaroscuro painting. After a moment, he looked up at Inej clinging to the doorframe.

Right. She'd convinced him to do this. She had to be the brave one. She let her hand trail casually off the doorframe as she finally entered the room, trying to make it look like she hadn't been too scared to come in. He said nothing, just turned his attention to his boots. His cane was leaning up against the wall, between the bed and the fruit crate he used as a bedside table. Inej glanced around quickly, feeling like she'd never seen the place properly before. The bed was... not very big. Bigger than her old cot had been, wide enough for a pair of pillows that already laid on it, but even if Kaz had been the size of Inej (and he certainly wasn't), they would have been in close quarters. Kaz deserved more credit than she'd thought for his courage.

She took her shoes off; he unclipped his watch, coiled up the chain and set it on the crate with a soft clink. She unstrapped her kneepads and then her knives, lifting a foot onto the bed to hike up her pant leg and reach the one strapped to her ankle. Kaz sat on the edge of the bed and leaned back on his hands, watching her loosen the buckle. It made her self-conscious, like she was undressing instead of just taking off her weapons. Her pant leg was rolled up to the knee and the moonlight washed out her skin to grey. She avoided his gaze when the knife was off and she was pulling her pant leg back down over her calf. Most of them, she left in a pile beside her shoes, tucked up against the wall, but she handed Sankt Petyr to Kaz and he silently put it on the crate next to his watch.

She still needed to deal with her hair. He was back to leaning on his hands, watching her, and she felt self-conscious again, like she was a performance he was watching. She sat on the bed next to him, crossing her legs under her, and that helped. She reached back to her hair, feeling for the pins and pulling them out, holding them in her teeth while she worked. When her hair tumbled free down her back, the hitch in his breath startled her. He was staring at it.

"See something you like?" she asked around the pins in her mouth.

"Yes."

Her entire face immediately felt like it was on fire; Inej was desperately thankful he probably couldn't tell in the moonlight. Her fingers fumbled blindly for the rubber band that gathered her hair at the back of her neck, and she winced when it caught in her hair as she dragged it off.

"What is that?" he asked, so she handed it to him.

"Keeps my hair from coming undone all day with fewer pins," she said as she finger-combed the mass of it. She'd left her bag with her hairbrush on the ship; she'd go retrieve it and brush her hair properly in the morning.

He held the band up in the light and then stretched it gently in his fingers. "It's a band of rubber. Wrapped with something."

He was still wearing his gloves, she realized, and couldn't tell by touch what it was. "Yarn," she said, separating her hair and braiding it. "Breaks less, gets caught in my hair less." Kaz was still playing with the band, flexing it where it was looped over three of his fingers, but all of his attention was on her again. When she pulled her braid over her shoulder to finish the bottom half, he was so fixated on it that she had to wave her hand in his face to get him to give back the band. She wrapped it around the end of the braid and took her hairpins out of her mouth, standing up to drop the handful on the crate until morning. "You like my hair."

"You have a lot of it," he said, as if that explained everything.

Inej glanced down at her braid where it still hung down over her chest. "Do you want to touch it?"

Kaz stiffened. "No, I--it's fine," he said.

That was a lie. She wasn't going to push it tonight. The reality of exhaustion was starting to set in. "Sleep," she said, flapping a hand at the bed.

Kaz levered himself back up to his feet and pulled down the covers. Inej crawled over the bed to burrow in on the wall side without bothering to ask; he could have the open edge and an escape route. She was curled up on her side, facing the wall; the mattress creaked and the blankets slid down her arm as he settled in behind her. She peeked over her shoulder. He was mirroring her position, facing outward, and must have been near the edge of the bed to maintain the few inches of distance between their backs. She rolled her eyes to herself in the dark and crowded a little closer to the wall, rearranging her pillow under her. She hadn't shared a bed in ages. It would be fine. She could do this. "Goodnight, Kaz," she murmured. He grunted back.

***

Inej woke up warm and heavy. She didn't know where she was and swallowed down a spike of panic, listening to her surroundings. A crow was cawing. She cracked one eye open to see cheap white bed linens and a poorly-plastered wall in front of her. The Slat. The arm she'd had pillowed under her head was losing circulation, and she shifted off of it and flexed her hand, feeling the tingle of blood flow to her fingers. There was a weight lying in the dip of her waist; it was an arm in a wrinkled white sleeve, leading down to a black-gloved hand whose fingers were interlaced with her own. She finally registered the soft tickle of his breathing at the nape of her neck. She held absolutely still and listened carefully; he was definitely still asleep.

They were pressed together from neck to knees. She felt cocooned, sheltered and safe, boxed in between him, the wall and the blankets. She closed her eyes again, not daring to twitch a muscle lest she wake him. Apparently, all she'd needed to do was knock him out. That was good to know.

The next time she woke up, it was more firmly morning, the crows were louder, and Kaz was gone. She sat up in bed, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, and hoped that he hadn't taken it too poorly when he woke up to find himself wrapped around her like an octopus. It was possible this experiment wasn't going to be repeated.

She looked toward the wall where she'd left her shoes and knives and froze. Her little bag, retrieved from her (locked) cabin on the ship, was lying on the floor beside her knives.

Inej glanced toward the bedroom door. Kaz was probably downstairs in his office. She threw the covers off her legs, stretched mightily, and got up to dig out her hairbrush.

*****


	2. By the Looks, I Got You Shook Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe Kaz can't touch, but there's nothing keeping him from looking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit striptease--this one got pretty rude, pretty fast.

She came back to the Slat with him after they finished the job, dropping the black bag full of jewelry in the middle of his bed and dropping onto the mattress with a cackle as he put down his cane and lit the lantern.

"I should be ashamed of how good it feels to commit crimes," she said. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled; frankly, she looked like Nina did after using her Grisha powers. Radiant. Intoxicating.

"It went very well," he agreed, letting a grin escape. Kaz had committed more heists than he'd had hot dinners but he couldn't deny he still got a giddy little rush off the successes. Having his Wraith back for this one only multiplied that feeling. He'd missed her. Her quiet competence, her unexpected jokes, the way they clicked during a job and he could just _know_ she was going to be where he needed her to be, when he needed it. Someday he'd convince her to stay in Ketterdam again, get her back in the gang as his lieutenant. Maybe partner. Hell, maybe he'd just burn down the gang and they'd start up a new venture, the two of them, from the ground up.

He turned away from where she was still sprawled all over the bed and started undoing his tie. He was too jumped up to sleep; he'd probably swing by the Crow Club before turning in for the night and if he was doing that, then he needed a fresh shirt. "Are you going back to Geldstraat?" he asked idly.

He heard the creak of the bed as she stood up, followed by the rattle of her pulling the ratty curtain over the attic window. "Maybe later," she said.

He turned his attention to his cuffs. "In that case, you should come to the--" Something soft hit him in the back of the head. Had she thrown a pillow at him? He straightened up and tugged on a corner of fabric that was hanging in front of his eyes. It was a black sleeve. He blinked and dragged Inej's tunic off his head. Kaz turned slowly on his heel. She was standing near the bed, watching him. Her quilted vest stretched across her body, hugging her slim waist, and the muscle tone of her bare arms looked like carved sculpture in the lantern light. Her skin gleamed. Her knives were still strapped to her forearms. That was, somehow, what really caught his eye.

"What are you--" he started, losing his words as she slowly reached up both hands, still watching him, and tugged open the topmost snap on her vest. The second one followed it a few heartbeats later. His mouth was dry and he abruptly realized he was still clutching her shirt in front of him--he was hiding behind it, actually. He licked his lips and tossed the shirt on top of his trunk. "Inej--"

_Snap._ Three. She kept staring at him, her fingers tracing down the open edges of the vest. A long triangle of skin was showing. He took a step to the side, closer to the trunk, and she pivoted with him. Now the lantern light was casting shadows that drew his eyes to the subtle inner curve of her breast, just above where her fingers were tightening over the fourth snap.

_Snap._ There were only two more left.

"Inej," he said again, hearing the stress in his own voice. He was riveted to the sight of her, the widening view of things he tried not to think about if he could help it.

"Tell me to stop," she said, her fingers dancing down to the next snap. She would not look away from him. This was a challenge.

He opened his mouth and her hands halted for a bare second, but nothing came out and he watched helplessly as she ruthlessly tugged open the next one. The bottom of the vest was riding up now, exposing the flat plane of her stomach and a glimpse of her navel. There was a short scar just under her left breast; the skin was a little lighter there. Kaz took a ragged, painful breath.

"Are you okay?" she asked. She was still giving him that look of challenge; her hands were still poised to open the last barrier of decency, but she was checking in with him. Rules were rules, and that rule was sacred.

"I'm okay," he said. His voice was so rough it was barely a voice anymore. He cleared his throat. "I. What. Why."

"So you can't touch," she said, her voice smooth and low like cool water running over him. "But maybe... maybe you want to look." There was a faint waver in there, like she was unsure of herself, but she punctuated her sentence by pulling open the last snap. He was only allowed a few seconds to process that before she grasped the edges of her vest and peeled it off her shoulders, letting it drop off her arms. She caught it on her hand before it fell to the floor. And then threw it at his head.

He'd been wrong. Inej did have a smell. The vest smelled like her when it landed on his face. It was warm from her body heat when he plucked it off to throw on the trunk with her tunic. He did all this slowly, methodically, to delay the inevitability of looking back at her, but of course he did look back at her. He probably should have shut his eyes, thrown the vest back and demanded she put it back on, but Kaz was no gentleman. If she was going to show him, then he was going to look.

Her breasts were larger than he'd thought, now that they weren't concealed under thick, constrictive clothes. Their delicate swells were more pronounced in the light of the lantern. Her nipples were a darker brown and hardening in the drafty air of his bedroom. Her skin stretched over her collarbone and her ribs, and there was a faint tracery of muscle visible on her stomach, disappearing into the waistband of her pants.

When his gaze traveled back up to her face, he didn't fail to notice the pink rising on her cheeks. He could probably make her blush more than that, he thought, and deliberately raked his gaze up and down her figure one more time, for good measure. She did indeed flush darker and he couldn't help a little smirk at the sight. The colour rose on her chest, too, between her breasts.

Inej could never resist a chance to up the ante, though, once she got going, and when she cocked an eyebrow at him, Kaz knew he was going to pay for that. She turned around, showing him her back. Just as he was starting to wonder what was going on, she reached up to her hair. He swore silently and was glad she couldn't see him do it as she plucked the pins out of her hair; it cascaded down her back, reaching nearly to where her spine curved inward. She tossed the hairpins onto the blankets in front of her and slowly, torturously dragged the rubber band off her hair, letting it fall free into a wavy, silky black curtain that spread over her skin. She looked over her shoulder at him, giving him a glimpse of a breast and the tease of a stray lock of hair slipping down over her shoulder. "Should I leave the knives on?" she asked.

Kaz was going to die.

The knives came off, as they always did when Inej went to bed. She made disarming look pornographic, methodically pulling free the buckles on her arm sheathes one by one and then folding herself in half to roll up her pants and unstrap the knives from her legs. Her hair fell forward over her arms, exposing the bend of her spine, and her breasts hung down, half-concealed by the curtain of hair, as she exposed her muscular calves.

He wasn't expecting her to keep going, somehow, so when she flicked open the button on her pants he almost didn't know where to look. "You've come this far, Kaz," she said, not missing a trick, and held his gaze while she unfastened her pants. When they hit the floor, she kicked them at him and they collided with his shins. Kaz stepped around them.

"You're beautiful," he said, taking in the sight of her, the narrow jut of her hips and her powerful legs. She was crisscrossed with little scars. He recognized some of them, remembering the injuries. "Truly," he said, needing to be sure she knew it.

Inej smiled, long and slow, and sat down on the bed. She slid back until she was reclining, her head on his pillow, one leg bent and her hair pooling around her, and looked up at him languidly and said, "Your turn."

The words went directly to his cock. "I--" he croaked.

"You've taken your shirt off in front of me so many times, I've memorized your tattoos," Inej said idly, scratching her nails along her thigh. "You can't do it when I ask you to?" She rolled onto her side, propped up her head on her fist, and stared him down.

Kaz started unbuttoning his cuffs before consciously deciding to do it. Fair was fair. He was still in his waistcoat; he unclipped his watch and tossed it at her, just because. She caught it in front of her nose and dropped it on the blankets with a snort of laughter, letting the chain slide through her fingers. He realized he was smiling back with teeth and tossed his waistcoat at her, too. It landed over her hips; she dragged it off and tossed it in the general direction of the trunk, not looking terribly concerned when it fell short and landed on the floor. He started on his shirt buttons.

"You've memorized my tattoos, have you?"

"And your scars," she admitted. Her eyes were tracking his fingers as he opened his buttons. He took his time with it. There was no hurry.

"So you were looking," he said.

She blushed again. "There was nowhere safe to look!" she protested. "It's like modesty is a foreign concept to you!"

"That's quite an accusation for a naked woman to be making from my bed."

That one wasn't going to work; she arched an eyebrow back and said, "It's definitely saying something when naked women are complaining about your impropriety."

Kaz laughed as he yanked out his shirttails, undoing the last few buttons. Before she'd thrown her shirt at his head, he'd been about to strip down this far in the same room with no more precautions than turning away from her; she had him there. He peeled his shirt off and threw it at the pile of clothes on the trunk instead of at her. When he turned back, she was staring openly at his chest. 

"You just got finished telling me you've seen it all before," he teased her.

"I never said I was tired of it," she teased right back. She was like a different person tonight. Kaz sent a silent thanks to any gods that might be listening that he wasn't much of a blusher.

He looked at his hands, still in his gloves, and peeled those off, too, dropping them on the nightstand. The back of his hand started to itch when the air touched it, and he scratched at it a little. She was tracking the movement. That flush had spread down her chest again. Kaz looked pointedly away, up at a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling, and thought about the Crow Club accounts for a moment until he felt calm enough to reach for his trouser buttons.

"You can stop there if you want to," she said suddenly, her voice cooling all his nerve endings. Checking in again.

He rubbed a finger over his top button, pretending to think about it. Then he said, "I've come this far, Inej," and flicked the button open with his thumb. In the end, it was actually easier to remove that last barrier if he watched her face while he did it. It did nothing to diminish his erection, but he ruthlessly stomped down on his self-consciousness over it when he eased his trousers off over his half-hard cock and saw her breath catch. He stepped out of his trousers, tossing them at the rest of their clothes, and tried to breathe normally as he stood before her, completely naked.

Her eyes traveled slowly up his body to his face, lingered there a moment, and then traveled slowly back down. She shifted a little, as though she was uncomfortable.

It felt like his turn to ask. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," she said, a little breathlessly. 

"What now?" he asked.

Inej sat up and scooped her hairpins off the blankets, dropping them on the nightstand. She set her pile of sheathed knives down on the floor and grabbed up the half-forgotten bag of loot from where it was sitting near her knee, dropping that near the top of the mattress. "Sit," she said, moving her legs to make room at the foot of the bed. He sat, carefully. Cautiously. She'd left a good two feet of space between them. "Get comfortable," she added, throwing a pillow towards him. He didn't know where this was going, but he'd give her the benefit of the doubt; he moved back further onto the bed, down at the end of it, and propped up the pillow between his back and the (cold) wall. When he looked up again, she'd arranged herself at the head of the bed. She looked... comfortable. And indecent. He swallowed hard.

Her hand was tracing lightly over her collarbone; when she knew she had his attention, she let it trail downward. Two of her fingers drifted down her chest, between her breasts, and brushed along the lower curve of one. As he watched, her fingertip circled around to ghost lightly over her nipple. She sighed a little as it hardened under her touch.

"Inej," he breathed.

"How do you like watching so far?" Her hand was trailing down over her stomach, now.

"Watching is good," he said.

Her fingers reached the curls between her legs and stopped. "Want to keep going?"

"I don't want to pressure you."

"Not what I asked."

It turned out to be really annoying to be on the receiving end of that line. "Yes."

"Yes, what?"

Saints, he loved it when she was vicious. "Yes, I want to keep going. Do you?"

"I wouldn't have bothered to ask you if I didn't," she smiled back. She shifted position a little and bent her leg, putting far more of herself on display than he'd ever dared hope he'd get to see. His cock was aching.

"Why don't you help me decide where I should touch next?" she asked, her voice going rough. "And then, it'll be your turn."

Kaz had no idea what he'd be doing with his life a year from now, but there was no question it was going to involve her.

*****


	3. Maybe It's Not So Bad (So Let Your Hair Down Now)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he didn't move closer to the bed, she started taking the pins out, watching him from the corner of her eye. There was a chance he'd spook like a horse and be gone in the next instant. He'd quite clearly been at war with himself over the hair thing for ages. But, if he'd missed her this much (as much as she'd missed him) and if she'd worried him this much, then maybe this would work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hair brushing ;) More sensual fluff.

She knew she'd been gone a long time. She was almost a week later getting back than she'd told everybody in her last set of letters (messy notes, dashed off and sent in a rush during the briefest stop in Os Kervo to resupply). In the end, she was fairly certain it had been a runner paid by Kaz who'd passed on the news that she'd returned; nobody had been there, of course, when they'd first docked but Jesper had materialized, out of breath, by the time Inej was ready to disembark. His welcome hug had felt like he was squeezing her in two, and they'd walked the whole way home to Wylan with his arm flung around her shoulders. It made her feel a bit guilty, although Jesper and Wylan both waved that off.

"We both have personal experience with sea voyages going awry, if you forgot," said Wylan, who she kept catching just smiling at her and looking intensely relieved.

"I'm honestly impressed you're normally so accurate about when you'll be getting home," said Jesper.

"I never appreciated how difficult it is to communicate with the outside world at sea until I took up this task," said Inej. "Now that I'm leaving people on land I want to talk to."

When Kaz showed up, only about an hour behind her, and let himself in like he owned the place, neither of the other boys looked surprised. Inej blinked. So the runner had borne the news in two directions, then. She didn't know why she was surprised, either. At this level of naked worry from the three of them, it was hard to decide if she felt more exasperated, guilty or pleased.

"Drink?" Jesper asked him as Kaz settled himself at the other end of the couch Inej was curled up on.

"Whatever you're having," said Kaz, arranging his leg and cane more comfortably. There was an entire cushion of space between them and he hadn't so much as looked her way. But there was an empty armchair across the rug, beside Jesper. Feeling pleased was starting to win out. Inej probably needed higher standards, if sharing a piece of furniture with her was all it took.

"I'll have the same," she spoke up pointedly when Jesper stood up, because hugs were wonderful but nobody had offered _her_ a drink yet.

Jesper shot her a look. "You drink now?"

She crossed her arms. "I'm a pirate."

"Touche," he said, and she heard a faint snort from Kaz.

"I already told the cook you were joining us for dinner," said Wylan to Kaz, "so you're going to." He raised his chin like he was ready to fight about it.

"...Fine."

Oh, he _had_ missed her. The guilt crept back to the fore; she pushed it down as she accepted her drink from Jesper.

***

He stayed through dinner and lingered through an evening of conversation. This was possibly record-setting sociability for Kaz. He was still there when her eyelids started to drag down, lulled by the familiar smells and sounds of home and the delight of being warm on dry land again. He'd started shooting her occasional, darting glances, though, and she got an idea what his scheme was.

She put down her empty glass and stood up, stretching a little. "I'm fading," she said. "I'm off to bed early, like a little old lady."

"It had to happen someday," said Jesper. "Why not at the ripe old age of... how old are you?"

She grinned and kissed him quickly on the cheek, then Wylan. She caught Kaz's eye when she turned around, slipping between Wylan's chair and an end table to head for the stairs.

"Goodnight," they both called, and the faint thump of a cane followed her into the hallway. She smiled to herself and led him up the stairs to her comfortably-appointed bedroom, where her shore leave bag waited on her bed. He shut the door softly behind him and she turned to face him, leaning on the back of her desk chair.

"Hello," she said.

"Welcome home," he replied, crossing the room and stopping a foot away. She offered a hand and he took it in his gloved one, sliding a soft thumb over the backs of her knuckles. He was examining her face like he'd forgotten it.

"I hope you weren't worried," she said finally.

"Not for the first five days. The last two, it started to get a little harder to be completely unconcerned," he admitted.

She winced. "There was a storm."

Kaz shrugged. "The sea is full of danger and doesn't care much for our schedules. First rule of Ketterdam."

"I thought the first rule had something to do with money," she said with a wink.

He huffed a little laugh. "All the rules have something to do with money."

"Oh yes, of course," she grinned, happy with the playfulness. "How do I keep forgetting?"

His smile was mostly in his eyes, but he leaned his cane on his own hip to raise his other hand to her shoulder, giving the muscle that led to her neck a little rub. She'd started thinking of this gesture as his answer to a hug; she rolled her head away a little to give him better access and let a tiny groan escape her throat as he rubbed some of the tension out. His other hand still held hers, lightly, his thumb still tracing delicately over her knuckles. Her eyes closed in bliss.

"Are you staying?" she asked, slurring her words a little. She really was tired, and relaxing more by the minute.

He hesitated. "I shouldn't."

She guessed she could go to the Slat tomorrow night. She understood; this place was really too far away from his world. He was responsible for a lot of lives and being away had to mean delegating responsibility. Responsibility was dangerous in the Barrel. In Ketterdam. Still, hang the Dregs. Her bed was large and soft. "Fair enough," she said, easing out of his hands. "You're not leaving me immediately, though."

"Well," he said, "if you're going to twist my arm like that."

She went to the bed and opened her bag. "There's something you can help me with before you go."

Satisfied by the question in his eyes, she picked up her hairbrush and held it out to him.

He watched it like it might bite him. "You want me to--"

Inej sat on the bed cross-legged and turned herself to face the pillows, setting the brush down behind her. "It's not going to brush itself, Brekker."

When he didn't move closer to the bed, she started taking the pins out, watching him from the corner of her eye. There was a chance he'd spook like a horse and be gone in the next instant. He'd quite clearly been at war with himself over the hair thing for ages. But, if he'd missed her this much (as much as she'd missed him) and if she'd worried him this much, then maybe this would work.

She had most of the pins out when he put his cane down and pulled off his coat.

The bed dipped behind her when he eased himself onto it, and she shifted with him until his legs were comfortably arranged and the angle was good. He reached up and pulled out the last pin for her; she felt the rest of her ponytail fall down. He was gentle and careful pulling off the hairband, far more careful about it than she ever was, having resigned herself to losing chunks of hair when it got too tangled around the band. He didn't touch it again for a moment, but then he set something down on the bed, just at the edge of her vision. She turned her head; it was his gloves. Inej stared at them. Well, he'd wanted to touch her hair, and those gloves weren't meant for feeling anything but lockpicks. As long as he was sure about this.

She felt a light tug as he took a handful of her hair. It dropped gradually back down; he was running his fingers through it. She smiled. "Is it everything you dreamed?"

He took a ragged breath.

"Kaz?" Inej twisted around. He had his eyes closed, his fingers digging into his thighs. He was breathing unsteadily through his mouth. Gone to whatever dark place he went when he stumbled into a trap of pain. "Kaz," she said, low and intense. "Kaz, breathe. Breathe with me."

His eyelids fluttered and she started taking loud, exaggerated breaths. He tried to copy her. "Yes, that's it," she said. "Come back to me."

Together they breathed in and out and finally he cracked his eyes open, blinking at her. "Sorry," he rasped.

She shook her head. "I didn't mean to push you into pain."

He reached out to where her hair fell in a curtain as she twisted and leaned toward him, stopping just short of touching the strands again. "I know you didn't. I thought this might be different."

"We can stop," she said. "Or you can put your gloves back on."

"No," he said, a little sharply. "No, I can do this. Just talk to me. That helps."

She frowned back at him but did as he asked, sitting up and facing forward again. If it happened a second time, she would put a stop to this experiment. "What should I talk about?" she asked.

She heard him pick up the brush and felt him touch her hair again. "Anything."

She talked about her parents. Her mother used to do her hair for performances, as a child. Ornate braids, flower headdresses, chignons tucked full of red and yellow flowers. She did her own hair for everyday things; she'd learned to do braids and pigtails as a little girl. They were messy sometimes, but she got better at it.

Her eyes closed involuntarily as he slowly pulled the brush through her hair. He was gentle; it made quiet, relaxing sounds whenever she paused to think of what to say next.

When it was time to brush her hair out at night, though, she always tried to get her papa to do it. She'd find him sitting at the little table in the wagon, reading or fixing some small thing, and smile winningly up at him, brush held up in front of her like an offering. Papa would look over at her very slowly, stare at the brush for a second as though he was considering it carefully, and then every time he would nod and set down whatever he'd been doing, so she could crawl up in his lap, and then he would brush her hair and sing quietly to her.

"Why always your father?" Kaz asked quietly, brushing strands back from her ear. Her bones were turning to liquid.

"He did it more gently than Mama. She'd tug all the knots out until your scalp felt like it was on fire." Inej paused. "She was much faster at it."

He chuckled, brushing a long, careful stroke from the crown of her head. When he found a knot, he worked at it gently, holding her hair so that she didn't feel it yanking from her scalp. "Was your hair always this long?"

"No," she yawned. "It was short and then it grew."

She got a mild tug on a lock of it for that. "You know what I meant."

She grinned. "I always kept it past my shoulders. So we could style it for performances."

Kaz hummed, still brushing. When he reached for the underside, where it would collect snags and snarls near her hairband at the nape of her neck, he moved very carefully to avoid brushing his hands against her. She still felt occasional, glancing touches to her back, but they were through her shirt and he never reacted more strongly than a little hitch in his breath.

She realized she'd been quiet for a while, too busy savouring the feelings. "Are you okay?" she murmured.

"It feels more good than bad, now," he said, which wasn't entirely an answer, but she decided to let it slide. She tilted her head back, giving him easier access to the crown of her head. The brush dragged lightly over the hair there and she closed her eyes to pretend it was his fingers, combing through her hair and massaging her scalp.

Eventually, far too soon, he put the brush down. She felt him gather up all her hair and then there were small, separate tugs. Her hair began to feel snug at the sides of her head. Was he...? "Are you _braiding_ it?"

"You braid it every night, don't you?" he asked, with more of those quick, light tugs. There was a pause. "You make this look easier than it is."

She laughed. "It doesn't have to be perfect to sleep on."

"That's good to hear." His slender fingers plucked the hairband off the blankets and she heard the little _snap-snap_ as he wound it carefully around the tail of the braid. She felt him pick her hair up again when he was done; she suspected he was running his fingers over the plait.

"Does it pass inspection?" she asked after a moment.

"It feels nice," was all he said, letting it go again. She pulled it over her shoulder to examine it and satisfy her curiosity. He'd done a reasonably good job. Of _course_ he had learned how to do it entirely from watching her and then mastered it on the first try with his nimble fingers. Typical.

"Thank you," she said over her shoulder.

He finished tugging his gloves back on and then cupped both hands around her shoulders and leaned in close enough to breathe hot on her ear. "See you tomorrow," he whispered, his voice husky.

She shivered, closing her eyes involuntarily, and when she opened them again he was gone. Inej twisted out of her sitting position and laid her head on the pillow, playing with her braid in the dim lantern light.

She was going to sleep _very_ well.

*****


	4. If You Need to Curse My Name, Curse Me Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaz didn't even remember where he'd gotten the feather.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is porn. Please proceed in an orderly fashion to the ending.
> 
> (also, if anyone is interested to know about the subtitles for each part and hasn't just googled them, this one is from a song by The Heavy)

Kaz didn't even remember where he'd gotten the feather. It was clearly the kind of plumage that could only be found in the wild on West Stave; it wasn't the enormously long-haired, billowy soft type of feather that the dancing girls wore in their hair or made folding fans out of by the handful, but it was still an unnatural shade of blue. Perhaps it had shaken loose from a costume at the theatre where he stored all his work clothes. Maybe he'd found it clinging to the shoulder of his coat. Possibly it had found its way into the bottom corner of his trunk by some other means.

All that mattered at this point was how soft it was.

Inej looked skeptically from him to the feather, which he was holding up between them. Her hair was loose under her head and spread all over his pillow in a very enticing way; he admired the way it shone in the lantern light. He was lying on his side next to her, propped up on his other elbow, and as a little furrow appeared in her brow, he spun the quill of the feather between his fingers to make it twirl.

"What are you planning to do, tickle me with that until I tell you all my secrets?" she asked.

"You mean you've kept some of them back from me, Wraith?" Kaz asked, mock-wounded. When she rolled her eyes, he sobered his expression a little. "Humour me," he said, lowering his voice a little and hoping it sounded more seductive, or something.

She was still eyeing the feather.

"For a moment," he amended. "And then tell me to stop if you need."

Inej met his eyes. He watched her silently battle with herself, and then the wrinkle in her brow smoothed out. "Go on," she said.

It was impossible to put into words how that decision to trust him made him feel, so he just winked at her. Then, he looked down at her body, planning his avenue of attack.

The shell of her ear was small and delicately-formed; he traced the very tip of the feather lightly down the edge of her ear, to the lobe marked in the centre by the indentation of an empty piercing. She twitched and a giggle escaped. Kaz trailed the feather off of her apparently-ticklish ear and stroked it down the soft-skinned hollow hidden behind her ear, following the natural line of her muscles down her elegant neck to the hollow of her throat. The twitch changed to a shiver as he guided the feather toward her throat. He traced around the inside curve of that little hollow, watching her throat move in a convulsive swallow. She breathed in shakily and he watched her watch his face as the feather swept slowly along the ridge of her collarbone and down the join of her shoulder. She was trying not to pant for air and her eyes were wide. But her pupils were getting larger, not smaller. He halted his slow, careful tracing over her skin and gave her a questioning look, to be sure.

She closed her eyes and nodded, tilting her head back into the pillow. Kaz let out a smile she couldn't see and resumed his exploration. He traced the tip of the feather in the lightest of touches down the inside of the arm she held close to her body, inches from where he was propped up next to her. She gasped and tensed when he reached the inside of her elbow, and her pulse fluttered as fast as her ragged breathing when he followed a tendon down her forearm, sweeping the edge of the feather over the soft skin and faint, crisscrossed veins of her inner wrist. Her hand was in a fist but he teased over the back of her hand, between two knuckles, and as far down one finger as he could reach.

She jolted when the feather grazed the outside of her thigh. Kaz hadn't expected that; he pulled the feather away and blinked down at her face. Her eyes were squeezed shut, a flush spreading across her cheeks and down her neck to mottle the skin between her breasts. She was breathing hard like she'd just been running for her life. Desire crashed through him.

"You seem to be a bit affected," he said.

"Do I?" she asked raggedly. Her eyes were still closed.

An uncontrollable smirk plucked at his mouth. "Does it tickle?" he asked, skating the feather along the top of her leg to punctuate his words.

She jumped again and let out a breathy cry; her knee bent as though she had been about to kick her leg out and her stomach muscles twitched. "Saints," she hissed through her teeth.

"How does it feel?" he pressed.

"M-my skin is on fire."

"Good fire?"

"F-fuck you, Kaz."

"We can stop if you want," he said, delighted. There were so many ways to provoke her that he'd never even contemplated.

She cracked her eyes open to glare at him through her long, damp eyelashes.

"When you keep your eyes closed like that," he said conversationally, turning away from her blown pupils to contemplate the rest of her again, "is it a shock to feel whenever it touches you again?" He grazed the long edge of the feather along the flat of her stomach, getting another high-pitched little noise and watching her whole body tense and then tremble. He traced his way up to her ribs and then across her chest, just barely under her breasts. "Do you wonder where it'll touch you next?"

She whimpered.

"What was that?" he asked innocently.

She swore at him again, although the force of it was diminished by how shaky her voice was.

He shifted a little, his erection starting to feel insistent, and gave into the urge to touch the feather to her breasts. He started with the undersides, dragging another high gasp out of her. She pushed the heels of her hands into the bed and arched back into the pillow, like she was trying to push herself up the bed and get away from the feeling. Her legs fell open, knees bent and ankles crossing over each other, and she squirmed on the blankets. Kaz contemplated this and then leaned his head closer to her ear as he let the feather slip across her breast--her chest was heaving visibly with every breath she dragged into her lungs--and graze her nipple. "I wish I could touch you like this with my lips and my hands," he whispered, feeling a little ragged himself. "I'd like to be able to feel how hot your skin is while I take you apart like this."

She moaned. The sound seemed to go directly to his cock. "Fuck," he whispered, feeling a little crazy with it. Her breath caught at the sound of his voice and he lifted the feather from her breast to sweep slowly down her stomach, hearing another choked-off gasp when it ghosted over her navel. He changed direction to drift it over the crease of her thigh with the barest of contact. She was mumbling something fast under her breath, some kind of litany maybe, and her knees bent and her hips canted up a little as he moved the feather across her thigh. He sat up, squeezing his eyes closed briefly when his trousers dragged over the sensitive head of his cock, and rearranged himself near the foot of the bed. Inej peeked her eyes open to shift her legs and keep from kicking him, which he appreciated. He glanced up at her face from between her knees, but she had her head thrown back and her forearm covering her eyes, still panting like she'd run half the city.

The first touch of the feather to the inside of her knee made her spasm. Her knees almost slammed together; he jerked his face away but she relaxed again, letting her other leg hang off the side of the bed. She pushed the ball of her foot into the floorboards as though the contact would ground her. Kaz turned his attention back to her thighs.

Inej was a roadmap of scars, thin and delicate ones and textured, rough-looking lines that beaded out of her skin. Her neck and arms were tanned darker than the rest of her from all the time she spent at sea. Her thighs had a few faint scars, lighter-brown lines across the tops and outside curves of her legs, but her inner thighs, that vulnerable network of nerves and veins, were smooth and unmarked, well-protected from the marks of battle compared to the rest of her. And probably sensitive, he thought, teasing one with the feather. 

"Uh--!" The sound was practically ripped out of her; her hips arched off the bed with it. Kaz's more reprehensible instincts kicked in at the sight and he traced steady lines up and down the inside of her leg, not quite reaching the inner crease of her thigh. He twisted the thin, soft edge of the feather in little sinewy patterns high on her leg, watching her twist and squirm under the touch. Her hips pushed up towards him; her hands fisted in the blankets and her spine curved into a tight arch, pushing her breasts up into the air. She was making desperate, sobbing noises, gasping his name over and over as its own litany. She was wet in front of him; he wondered what it would cost him to reach out and touch her and tip her over the edge.

He couldn't do it. The consequences if he did weren't going to do anything for her pleasure, never mind his. Decision made, he used the feather as a substitute for his touch there, too.

One soft brush was all it took; she went taut as a bowstring and he watched her face. She had her fist pressed into her mouth as she came, muffling her cry. She was probably putting teeth marks into her skin. He reached down and palmed his erection through his trousers, memorizing the way her body rolled as it ripped through her, her unfocused eyes, the hand clenched in the blankets. Her toes dug into the bed, into the floorboards. Her thighs tensed so the muscles stood out, strong as iron. And then she collapsed into herself, a trembling mess of tired muscles. The hand she'd bit down on rubbed exhaustedly over her face. Her other hand was still clenched hard in the blankets.

"Saints," she mumbled into her hand. Kaz snorted at that.

Eventually, she sat up. Her lips were wet and bitten-dark. Her eyes were still dark with arousal and her hair was a fucking mess. It was Kaz's turn to whimper a little. His fingers fumbled open his top button.

Inej's gaze flicked from the obvious way he was tenting his trousers to where he'd left the feather lying on the bed. She reached out and delicately picked it up, studying it. He watched her run the fingertips of her other hand along the edge of it, then smooth the hairs of it back into a flat plane where they'd been ruffled up. She watched him watching her and started playing with it more, pulling it down through the fingers of her other hand over and over and letting the edges brush lightly over the pads of her fingers.

"Go on," she said.

*****


End file.
